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What is a “traditional college experience”
?
You somehow read “beds on campus” where I wrote “mandate Freshmen live on campus.”
Houston kids, like yours, want to get out of the city to go to college. UH has to provide that experience. Rice does it. UH can do it too.
You’re in denial.
lmao, I just don’t believe your made up “facts”
You’re not answering my question, and even if you tried, based on your other posts, it doesn’t make any sense.
- Freshman are not the problem. We have enough freshman living on campus compared to other public schools. Stop pinning the commuter school label on them, because most people that are commuting are the transfer students from community colleges or other universities
- Rice is an Ivy League adjacent school that isn’t located in the NE. It’s the Stanford of the south. Rice will always attract students from all over the country that are forced to live near campus because they have the academic prestige to do so.
- The actual problem that hurts UH is Houston’s suburban sprawl. Living near UH is expensive, and the city of Houston due to its politics continues to promote urban sprawl away from the inner core, which forces people on the outer suburbs to commute to the school
and no time to spend on the campus
UH will never be Rice, but it will also never be Alabama. UH is in a sense, is stuck in the middle where it’s aiming to improve all aspects of its brand. Athletics is the front porch for improvement based on our circumstances.
Texas A&M could technically be considered a “commuter school” too, but the difference is that the entire city of college station surrounds the Texas A&M campus including apartments and off-campus houses.
Unless you can afford a $2,000,000 million home or if you want to buy a $300,000+ house pre-renovated house in Third Ward, you have to commute all the from Cypress or Katy or Sugarland.
For what it’s worth, Rice also does not require students to live on campus. They strongly encourage it and the overwhelming bulk of Freshmen do, but there is no requirement, and no consequence for not doing so.
When my daughter was looking at colleges, my wife mentioned the schools she applied to with a work associate who also had a kid in high school. When my wife mentioned UH the other person said, “I’d be worried she would be raped or murdered at UH”. And the person was dead serious.
Yes, but the typical rice student doesn’t think twice about it. 50% of rice’s students are from outside of Texas.
You think Rice students are going to live in Cypress or Conroe? If they have the money to go to a private school out of state, then they likely have the money to live in an apartment/rent a house in somewhere in the 610 loop.
UH serves a large diverse base, many of whom are first gen college students. I would assume that a good amount of students live in Houston suburbs, far from Downtown.
UH being a “commuter school” isn’t the problem. UH can remain a commuter school and still have a thriving campus, but the problem is that those commuters live way too far because Houston (well, Texas really) promotes cheap urban sprawl away from dense inner city urban cores / first ring suburbs
Bet there are a few baylor coeds that could share their experiences with the ‘traditional’ college experience…
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I’ve lived in DFW for over a decade. I have a number of friends who’ve asked me about UH. My friend’s oldest is a part of the record breaking freshman class. He is living on campus. His parents are very excited for him and have zero ties to UH or Houston. Funny these people seem to have a more positive view of UH than some of our own alums.
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It’s been mentioned here before, but when I travel I always wear UH gear. We do seem to have a way better reputation outside the state. So many people here grew up either an Ag or Horn and think anything else is garbage. Most of them never sniffed college.
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This makes sense. Most out of state students would be comparing objective criteria when evaluating colleges.
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Just this weekend my brother-in-law (a Uh grad) did the same thing when discussing his daughter having UH on her list of schools (She’s a sophomore in HS). He said, didn’t a student just get robbed at Moody Towers??
Familiarity breeds contempt?
That’s always true.
I get weird looks whenever I wear UH gear in Austin, Dallas, SA etc.
But when I am out of state, people would talk to me about either football or basketball.
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Chatted up a recent Tech grad doing some work for me in Dallas. I said I was a UH grad and he mentioned that he wishes Jamal Shead hadn’t been hurt.
UT doesn’t have a a freshman on campus mandate. They don’t have enough dorms. Does Pitt or Cincy?
Again, freshman aren’t the problem.
Being a commuter school isn’t a bad thing.
What’s hurting UH is suburban sprawl.
Fine. How’s that going to change? Many UH students come from inside the Beltway. For others, UH is a great on campus experience vs having to go to Lubbock or Richardson or San Marcos.
Pitt does.
Do you have statistics on that claim?
The houses in College Station are very cheap, because the area is incredibly spaced out with hardly any urbanization. It’s essentially a large suburb that surrounds a university.
UH, on the other hand, along with houses within the 610 loop, surrounds and actual economic activity center, which makes houses very expensive. The houses that are cheap, are in historically black neighborhoods that are heavy with crime.
So if you’re a middle class person and your goal as a late 20s/early 30s is to raise a family and send your kids to a “good” school, you have 2 options:
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A: Buy an old dilapidated house in Third Ward for $300,000, try not to get robbed, and pay for expensive private schools
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B: Buy a newer $300,000 2-story house in Conroe, in a bright and pretty suburb, with good schools
Which do you think most people will choose?
The problem is, Option B, requires a long commute. And so, if you’re a kid who grows up in Conroe. What are you going to do? Go to UH and live on/near campus all 4 years? Or go to A&M and get what your money is worth for a true “College Experience”?
The only way to solve this problem, is to stop the city of Houston from sprawling outward, and start gentrifying both the inner loop as well as the inner ring suburbs between 6`0 and Beltway so that people can spend more time on campus without having to drive 1-2 hours out with traffic 3 times a week